Joke's on ATM thief: Only $30 inside!

BOISE, Idaho (KBOI) -- Police are trying to figure out who stole an ATM from a local carwash early Tuesday morning.

Boise Police says officers received an alarm from the Idaho Central Credit Union on the 10900 block of West Fairview at 1:55 a.m. Officers say someone had tampered the ATM and damaged the control panel. Nothing was stolen.

About 45 minutes later, an alarm at the Like Nu Car Wash on Latah Street went off. BPD says someone managed to steal the ATM. A witness told officers they saw a pickup truck driving away at a high rate of speed.

"I can't believe it's in my own neighborhood," said Darlene Burke, a Boise resident. "People must be hard up for money, I guess."

But the person who took the machine won't be getting very much cash out of it. KBOI 2News talked with Tom Durrant, who installed and maintains Like Nu's ATM. He says as far as he and the owner of the car wash know, there were only three ten dollar bills in the machine.

"That's a pretty heavy crime to go to prison for thirty dollars," Durrant said, "If you can get in and get it out of there."

The ATM expert says it's nearly impossible to even get the money out. He says to do so, someone would have to use a cutting torch, which would likely burn up the money inside before one could even get to it.

Durrant tells KBOI 2News the machine itself is probably the only thing of value that the criminal got away with...but even that won't do the thief any good.

"If you drag them down the road they don't work very well afterward," Durrant laughed, "World's stupidest criminal."

Durrant says there's no chance of the person who took the ATM getting any of its users' card or account information because those numbers are all triple encrypted.